by Olivia Gates
And that must be exactly what that gargantuan rat was after. What better way to insinuate himself into her life than to inspire something of this intensity and permanence in her closest kin?
But she didn’t believe that he’d found out about her family’s secret only yesterday. As a master of manipulation, he knew how to pull people’s strings as instinctively as he breathed. He must have long uncovered the secret, must have been keeping it to use when it most suited his purposes. And so he had. She’d bet her uncle, and probably her mom, too, would walk off a cliff for him now.
He’d gotten what he wanted. Just like he always did. She’d pushed him away, so he’d swerved, reentered her life from a gaping hole she hadn’t known existed. She had no doubt he’d entrench himself there for as long as he saw fit.
All she could do in the meantime was thwart his intentions and steer away from him until she could flee.
Then nothing would ever bring her back.
Meanwhile, she wouldn’t voice her blasphemous opinions of her uncle’s newfound deity. While she believed this would end in heartache, as everything involving Jalal always did, she didn’t have the guts to extinguish her uncle’s rekindled appetite for life. She’d keep her apprehensions to herself. For now.
This was something her uncle and mom needed, something they hadn’t let themselves dare to dream of. If they were to wake up one day to an ugly reality, she wouldn’t be the one to shock them awake now. She could only speculate what Jalal’s endgame would be…
“…tonight.”
Her uncle’s last words crashed into her train of thoughts, piling them up. He—he couldn’t have said…
But, looking about to sprout wings and take flight, her uncle said it again. “You heard right. Prince Jalal has invited us all to his residence tonight to celebrate my addition to his team.”
* * *
“Marhabah ya bent el amm.”
The voice that had echoed in her being for most of her adult life reverberated in the still, warm night. As smooth as the steel of a burnished sword, as calm as the desert. And it had said…
Welcome, cousin.
Fury surged like a geyser. She swept around with the momentum of her frustration at being cornered again, with the blade of her family’s fragile expectations held to her throat.
And she snarled, “Oh, no you don’t.”
In answer to her vehemence, a chuckle rumbled as if out of nowhere and everywhere, echoing on the deceptively placid breeze.
Her hairs stood on end as Jalal seemed to materialize out of the darkness, forged of its magic, imbued with its menace and magnificence. His face emerged from the velvet gloom in a masterpiece of hewn grandeur, stamped with an ancient birthright as merciless as the desert that had spawned him. His eyes reflected the flames of the brass torches flanking the cobblestone path she’d just traveled as if to the hangman’s noose.
“Don’t what, Lujayn? Call you what you really are to me?”
“I’m nothing to you.”
“You were always many things to me.” A smile twinkled gold in the cognac depth of his eyes, played seduction on the sculpted lips that had taught her what passion was, reminding her of every second when he’d plumbed her body and soul for ecstasies that had branded her for life. “And we discovered you’re more to me than we ever thought.”
“Finding out that we share a couple of stray blood cells and gene strands makes us as related as humans and apes.”
“Hmm, I assume I’m the one on the lower rung of the evolutionary scale here.” Merry demons licked their lips at her as he obliterated the distance between them.
“Don’t.” She didn’t know what her “Don’t” meant now. Or she did. Don’t mess with her. With her will. Her need to stay angry.
“Don’t what? Come closer? Like this?” She gasped as his arm slid around her waist, and again as her body surged into his without her volition. “But you’re right about my evolutionary status. Where you’re concerned, at least. You devolve me to my essential beast. One who only wants to possess, plunder—” he gave a slight tug, had her melting against him from breast to thigh “—pleasure.”
His feel demolished her balance and his scent deluged her lungs as her gaze flitted around frantically.
The only signs of life were the sounds of conversation and laughter emanating from the two-level sprawling villa at his back. She’d seen guards at the gates when she’d been driven into the estate’s extensive grounds, but none since arriving. Maybe they were so ingeniously hidden that she couldn’t even feel them.
No. He wouldn’t be doing this if any eyes were around to witness it. Her driver had driven away in haste, probably following Jalal’s orders for everyone to disappear once she arrived.
He’d set up his trap and lay in wait, like a panther on the hunt, now playing with her like one would torment its prey.
“Take your hands off me, or your guests will know exactly what happened to you from the way you’ll limp back inside.”
His grin widened, his large, talented hands securing her without force, spreading over her back in gentle caresses.
“So you’ll knee me this time?” His fingers accessed the pleasure points that hadn’t been activated before or since him. “I’d risk way worse to feel you like this again.”
She glared up at him as every word, every gust of breath, every rub against that virility, hit her bloodstream like an aphrodisiac, spasming her core, swelling her breasts.
“And then, it’s not like you don’t want to feel me every bit as much.” To prove his point, he took his hands away. Her traitorous body remained pressed against his.
No matter what her mind was screaming, her every inch was begging for his feel, for everything. And it made her furious. Far more with herself than with him. For he was only making her admit and succumb to her weakness. She was the one responsible for it.
Yet when she spoke, she seethed, “So you had your fun forcing me to come here and to endure your pawing without being able to retaliate. Can I go now?”
The teasing in his eyes intensified. And that pout. She didn’t know how she kept from grabbing him by that mane that brushed his collar and yanking down his head so she could bite him. “First, you’re here of your own free will, as usual, as my esteemed guest and newfound if admittedly distant cousin. Second, you can retaliate in any way you choose. I’ll wear the marks of your passion with pride. Third…” He gathered her closer again when she didn’t step away, let her feel his daunting hardness throb into her belly. “I haven’t had my fun yet, not by a long shot.”
She barely held back from grinding into him. “You should have one of your concubines take care of this…big problem.”
Another chuckle revved in his expansive chest. “It’s you who made it that big when you didn’t show up with your family.”
Her uncle and mom had been puzzled and dismayed when she’d excused herself from going. But she hadn’t been able to come up with a good enough reason why. She’d thought even the real reason wouldn’t have been good enough for them.
So she’d pretended to cooperate but when the escort team Jalal sent had arrived, she’d said she’d gotten distracted, wasn’t ready and they’d had to go without her.
She’d thought she was saved, for that night, at least. Then the call had come. Her mom was distraught, thought her absence had offended Jalal. Why else would he so closely inquire why she hadn’t come? Knowing she had to capitulate, Lujayn had promised to be ready this time when he sent a limo for her. And here she was.
“Excuse me for not prioritizing your whims,” she gritted out, careful not to breathe deep or be flooded with his intoxication. “It wasn’t high on my list to drop everything to ‘celebrate’ my uncle being roped into your servitude for life.”
His smile was all forbearance. “Had you been here the past three hours, you would have heard your uncle and mother expressing how happy they are to finally claim our relation and how excited about our forthcoming collaboration.”
“That’s what you’re calling this artificial situation you’ve manufactured?”
“I didn’t create this gem of a ‘situation.’ I’m only making the best use of it after uncovering it.”
“Uncovering any tie between us, no matter how insignificant and distant isn’t a gem, it’s a…a…semm.”
And there it was. That pout, again. “Poison? Aren’t you getting this backward? It was the dishonor your family unjustly suffered that’s been poisoning their lives. And it is that grudge you’re nursing against me that’s been poisoning yours.”
“And you’re the benefactor who wants to administer the antidote out of the goodness of your nonexistent heart? My family is free to be eternally grateful for your crumbs of benevolence, and I’m free to prefer my poison, which is at least gulped down with no strings attached.”
“Take a deep breath, Lujayn.” He smiled down at her as he bent, had his lips tracing her every feature with feather-soft torment from her forehead to her lips to her pulse point. “Go to your happy place for a moment.”
Electricity forked from his lips to shriek down her nerves.
The blow of arousal finally had her lurching out of his loose hold, had her glaring her resentment up at him. “Can’t do that. You’ve left me none.”
Lightness deserted his eyes and stance by degrees, until he stood brooding down at her. “I won’t even touch that exaggeration, Lujayn. But whatever our problems in the past were, this is me taking the steps to eliminate them.”
“What—what do you mean by that?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets, his eyes growing serious. “In our last confrontation, you mentioned the ‘unbridgeable gap’ between us. It made me realize that while I never thought there was any real gap between us, you did. This gap, whether real or imagined, is no more.”
She gaped at him. Did he mean…?
Then she snorted. “If you mean it was all in my mind, please! Anyone with half a brain lobe would say the gap was actually a gulf. And that it will always remain unbridgeable.”
“Not true. While it never meant a thing to me, that so-called gulf that existed between us on a social level, with the new discoveries of your true lineage, it no longer exists.”
“Wow, really? You’re saying some second-grade royal blood equals being from a line of purebred kings and queens and the son of one of the most venerated kings in the region, the world?”
His shoulders rose and fell in a dismissing move. “I also come from the line of an ousted king and I am also the son of the most infamous ex-queen in that same world. You fare better in any comparison coming from a lineage of hardworking, honest people on one side and another unanimously known for valor and honor.”
“You mean that side of my lineage that was stripped of honor and reduced to serving their so-called relatives?”
He exhaled. “That’s in the past now. Your line will be restored. When everything’s out in the open, they will be looked upon with greater sympathy and respect than ever.”
“And this will happen only according to your whim.”
“According to the proof Fadi uncovered.”
“I meant you used this proof because you saw fit to. It could have remained buried for all you cared if it wasn’t to your advantage to make it public now.”
“The timing is fortunate, I can’t deny that.” That smile, fueling his irresistibility, was back radiating from his eyes, filling his lips. “Are you suggesting I shouldn’t have brought it out in the open because I stand to gain from doing so?”
He had an answer for everything, could twist anything to make himself come out looking right, logical, honorable even.
“You’re unbelievable, you know that? You’re in the middle of campaigning for a throne, and you waste time going to all this effort to get into my pants? You’re taking asserting your will and winning this imaginary challenge too far, aren’t you?”
He shrugged again, that movement laden with lazy poise. “Apart from the fact that I would do anything to ‘get into your pants,’ I would have done this for anyone.”
“Yeah, sure, you go around investigating people to see what wrongs were dealt them in generations past so you can right them.”
His nod was infuriatingly calm. “I do what I can when it comes to my notice, yes.”
“Well, you might as well take back anything you’ve done for my uncle and family now and not later.”
His eyebrows rose in feigned questioning. “You think I’ll do that after I have my way with you…again?”
“After you make sure you’re not having it, ever again.”
His tut-tut was indulgence itself as he gently pulled her against his will-sapping gorgeousness. “Is this a way to talk to a newly discovered distant relation?” Her neck arched for him as he nuzzled it, her body plastering to his as his hands dipped below her blouse to spread against the burning skin of her back. He suddenly groaned against her flesh, which vibrated with need. “Sooner or later, you won’t be able to resist me, won’t find a reason to. I’ve already given up trying. This…affinity we share is unstoppable, ya jameelati’l feddeyah.”
That sick jolt of longing lurched inside her heart. He’d always been too generous with his verbal passion. Hearing him call her his silver beauty brought a wave of moisture to her eyes that intensified the illumination of the full moon. She turned her face away from its glare and his lips trailed a path of fiery temptation down her cheek, her jaw.
A shudder shook her when he reached her ear, his croon pouring into her brain, liquefying it. “We’re going to be together in many ways from now on. Through my involvement in Patrick’s legacy, through your family’s involvement with me. This—” he crushed her against him, giving her aching breasts the contact they needed with his hardness and heat “—is inescapable.”
Wariness, logic, hostility were disintegrating, everything else inside her yearning to expose his flesh, to sink her teeth in his power. Everything else was receding, leaving only the need to drag him on top of her on the lush lawn, open her body to his invasion, writhe beneath him as he thrust her to ecstasy....
“You might as well stop fighting the inevitable now.”
Suddenly, she snapped out of spiraling down the abyss of lust and pushed against him, arms feeling like a rag doll’s.
He let her push him, showing her he’d only been holding her with her own desire.
Her palm spread against the vital wall of his chest. “So what’s this inevitable thing? Another affair? While I’m here?”
He took the hand splayed against his chest to his lips, singed its clammy flesh with nibbles. His eyes blazed with the passion that had once made her feel craved to her last cell. “It’s another affair for as long as we both want. If you leave, I’ll forever come to you, like I always used to.”
“And this social-status upgrade and cleansing you gave my family, and therefore me, is so we wouldn’t sully your image if our liaison is discovered?”
“Of course not.”
In spite of herself, his earnestness thrilled her. Could it be he didn’t care about her status, now or before…?
He aborted all foolish conjectures. “You have my word our relationship would not be discovered. My efforts were for your family, and for you, so you would no longer feel any inequality in our situation.”
So. No matter who or what she was or became, he’d always think her only good enough for an illicit liaison.
He’d polished her family name, not because he cared, or even intended to ever let her name be linked to his, but to placate her. To give her a false sense of worth. To make her feel good enough about herself so she’d walk back into his bed without the insecurities that had plagued her in the past.
Something she’d sworn she’d never feel again, corrosive oppression and shame, spread to eat through her vitals.
No. She wouldn’t let him do this to her again. She’d promised Patrick she wouldn’t.
She tugged her hand away from his.
His arms fell to his sides, didn’t try to pull her back.
He still attempted to with words. “Don’t push me away, Lujayn. The past is done, and I don’t want to bring it up again. We’re here and now, and everything is different.”
She smoothed trembling fingers over her hair and clothes that the tiny taste of his passion had messed, stepped farther away.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Somow’wak. Nothing’s changed. Or if it has, it’s for the worse. Sex without emotions or the most basic commonalities would only end up in something catastrophic this time.”
He balled his fists as if against the urge to grab her. “Who says there aren’t emotions? And we do have commonalities. Starting with how much we crave the hell out of each other and ending with our common interest in upholding Patrick’s legacy and seeing to your family’s reinstatement.”
“And we can each take care of all cravings and interests without the other’s participation. It’s even advisable, just ask your campaign manager. So why don’t you go pour all that drive into becoming king? You have my uncle chomping at the bit to help you sit on that throne. Contrary to me, he believes in you. Me, I’m here only until Aunt is well enough and she’s almost…”
He frowned. “Your aunt?”
“Your investigations didn’t bother to uncover more about me and my family than what would have us in your debt, right?”
“What’s wrong with Suffeyah?”
She blinked, surprised by his apparent concern, that he not only knew but remembered her aunt’s name.
He made an impatient, prompting gesture. Warily, hesitantly, she told him, watching him closely, trying to analyze the solemn intensity in his eyes as he listened.
“…the specialists agreed she only needed a simple mastectomy, which she had two weeks ago. We’re now waiting to see if they’ll forgo chemo and radiation and have her just on antihormonal treatments. Test results so far support that, so we’re looking at a few weeks at most before everything is concluded. By that time you’ll probably be the new king of a country where I never intend to return for the rest of my life.”
